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Author: David McDuff

In the Moscow Times, Allison Quinn gives an interesting insight into the workings of the mind of the Russian separatist leader Igor Girkin, aka “Strelkov”:

Despite Strelkov’s prominence as one of the top fighters in the Ukraine conflict, however, Zakharchenko implied he was generally not regarded highly by his fellow fighters.
An example of Strelkov’s ruthlessness involved a plan to destroy nine-story buildings in Slovyansk, a strategy that Zakharchenko said triggered a “wild scandal.”

This destructive scheme, the product of the fantasies of a “war-re-enactor” (Girkin’s peacetime profession and hobby), seems to have endeared him to the men under his command in Eastern Ukraine just as little as his plans to execute them for looting.

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Unofficial translation
Check against delivery
STATEMENT
by H.E. Mr. Sergey V. LAVROV,
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation,
at the 69th session of the UN General Assembly

September 27, 2014

Distinguished Mr. Chairman,

There is a growing evidence of a contradiction between the need for collective
and partner efforts in the interest of elaborating adequate responses to challenges
common to all and the aspiration of a number of states for domination and revival of
archaic bloc thinking based on military drill discipline and erroneous logic of “friend
or foe”.

The U.S.-led Western alliance that portrays itself as a champion of democracy,
rule of law and human rights within individual countries, acts from directly opposite
positions in the international arena, rejecting the democratic principle of sovereign
equality of states enshrined the UN Charter and trying to decide for everyone what is
good or evil.

Washington has openly declared its right to unilateral use of force anywhere to
uphold its own interests. Military interference has become a norm – even despite the
dismal outcome of all power operations that the U.S. has carried out over the recent
years.

The sustainability of the international system has been severely shaken by
NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia, intervention in Iraq, attack against Libya and the
failure of operation in Afghanistan. Only due to intensive diplomatic efforts the
aggression against Syria was prevented in 2013. There is an involuntary impression
that the goal of various “color revolutions” and other projects to change unsuitable
regimes is to provoke chaos and instability.

Today Ukraine has fallen victim to such an arrogant policy. The situation there
has revealed the remaining deep-rooted systemic flaws of the existing architecture in
the Euro-Atlantic area. The West has embarked upon the course towards “vertical
structuring of humanity” tailored to its own hardly inoffensive standards. After they
declared victory in the Cold War and the “end of history”, the U.S. and EU have opted
for expanding the geopolitical area under their control without taking into account the
balance of legitimate interests of all peoples of Europe. The Western partners did not
heed to our numerous alerts on inadmissibility of violation of the principles of the UN
Charter and Helsinki Final Act, and time and again avoided serious joint work for the
establishment of the common space of equal and indivisible security and cooperation
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Russian proposal to draft the European security
treaty was rejected. We were told directly that only the members of the North Atlantic
Alliance can have the legally binding guarantees of security, and the NATO
enlargement to the East continued in spite of the promises to the contrary given
earlier. The instant switch of NATO to hostile rhetoric and to the drawdown of its
cooperation with Russia even to the detriment of the West’s own interests, and
additional build up of military infrastructure at the Russian borders – made obvious
the inability of the alliance to change the genetic code it embedded during the Cold
War era.

The U.S. and EU supported the coup d’état in Ukraine and reverted to outright
justification of any acts by the self-proclaimed Kiev authorities that opted for
suppression by force of the part of the Ukrainian people that had rejected the attempts
to impose the anti-constitutional way of life to the entire country and wanted to
defend its rights to the native language, culture and history. It is precisely the
aggressive assault on these rights that compelled the population of Crimea to take the
destiny in its own hands and make a choice in favor of self-determination. This was
an absolutely free choice no matter what was invented by those who are responsible in
the first place for the internal conflict in Ukraine.

The attempts to distort the truth and to hide the facts behind blanket accusations
have been undertaken at all stages of the Ukrainian crisis. Nothing has been done to
track down and prosecute those responsible for February bloody events at Maidan and
massive loss of human lives in Odessa, Mariupol and other regions of Ukraine. The
scale of appalling humanitarian disaster provoked by the acts of the Ukrainian army in
the South-Eastem Ukraine has been deliberately underscored. Recently, new horrible
facts have been brought to light when mass graves were discovered in the suburbs of
Donetsk. Despite UNSC Resolution 2166 a thorough and independent investigation of
the circumstances of the loss of Malaysian airliner over the territory of Ukraine has
been protracted. The culprits of all these crimes must be identified and brought to
justice. Otherwise the national reconciliation in Ukraine can hardly be expected.

Russia is sincerely interested in the restoration of peace in the neighboring
country and this should be well understood by all who are even slightly acquainted
with the history of the deep-rooted and fraternal ties between the two peoples. The
way towards political settlement is well known: last April Kiev has already taken
upon itself an obligation in the Geneva Declaration of Russia, Ukraine, U.S. and EU
to immediately start a wide all-national dialogue with the participation of all regions
and political forces of Ukraine with a view to carrying out a constitutional reform.
The implementation of this obligation would allow all Ukrainians to agree on how to
live in accordance with their traditions and culture and restore the Ukraine’s organic
role as a binding link between the various parts of the European space which naturally
implies the preservation and respect by all of its neutral and non-bloc status. We are
convinced that in the presence of good will and denial of support to the “party of war”
in Kiev which is trying to push the Ukrainian people into the abyss of national
catastrophe the way out of crisis is within our reach.

The way to overcoming the crisis has been opened with the achievement of the
cease-fire agreement in the South-Eastem Ukraine on. the basis of initiatives by
Presidents P.A.Poroshenko and V.V.Putin. With the participation of the
representatives of Kiev, Donetsk, Lugansk, OSCE and Russia, practical measures are
being agreed upon successive implementation of this understanding, including the
separation of the parties to the conflict, pull back of heavy weapons of the Ukrainian
army and militia forces, setting up monitoring trough the OSCE and preparation for
elections in the South-East. Russia is ready to continue to actively promote the
political settlement. However, it should be crystal clear that we are doing this for the
sake of peace, tranquility and wellbeing of the Ukrainian people rather than for
catering to someone’s ambitions. The attempts to put on pressure on Russia and to
compel it to abandon its values, truth and justice have no prospects whatsoever.

Let me recall a history of not so far ago. As a condition for establishing
diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1933 the U.S. government demanded of
Moscow the guarantees of non-interference into domestic affairs of the U.S. and
obligations not to take any actions with a view to changing political or social order in
America. At that . time Washington feared a revolutionary virus and the above
guarantees were put on record on the basis of reciprocity. Perhaps, it makes sense to
return to this topic and reproduce that demand of the U.S. government on a universal
scale. Shouldn’t the General Assembly adopt a declaration on the inadmissibility of
interference into domestic affairs of sovereign states and non-recognition of coup
d’état as a method of the change of power? The time has come to totally exclude from
the international interaction the attempts of illegitimate pressure of some states on
others. The meaningless and counterproductive nature of unilateral sanctions is
obvious if we took an example of the U.S. blockade of Cuba.

The policy of ultimatums and philosophy of supremacy and domination do not
meet the requirements of the 21“ century and run counter the objective process of
development of a polycentric and democratic world order. Russia is promoting a
positive and unifying agenda. We always were and will be open to discussion of the
most complex issues no matter how unsolvable they would seem in the beginning. We
will be prepared to search for compromises and the balance of interests and go as far
as exchange concessions provided only that the discussion is respectful and equal.

The Minsk understandings of 5 and 19 September on the ways out of the
Ukrainian crisis and the compromise on the timeline of the entry into force of the
Association Agreement between Kiev and EU are good examples to follow, the same
as the finally declared readiness of Brussels to begin negotiations on establishing the
FTA between the European Union and the Customs Union of Russia, Belorussia and
Kazakhstan as it had been proposed by V.V.Putin back in January this year.

Russia has been consistently calling for harmonization of integration projects in
Europe and Eurasia. The agreement on political benchmarks and timelines of such a
convergence of integrations” would become a real contribution to the work of the
OSCE on the topic of “He1sinki+40”. Another crucial area of this work would be to
launch pragmatic discussion free of ideology on politico-military architecture in the
Euro-Atlantic, so that not only NATO and CSTO members but all the countries of the
region including Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia enjoy equal and indivisible security
and not have to make a false choice of: “either with us or against us”.

The new dividing lines in Europe should not be allowed, even more so that
under globalization these lines can turn into a watershed between the West and the rest
of the world. It should be stated honestly that no one has the monopoly on truth
and no one can anymore tailor the global and regional processes to one’s own needs.
There is no alternative today to the development of consensus regarding the rules of
sustainable global governance in the new historical circumstances – with full respect
to cultural and civilizational diversity of the world and the multiplicity of the models
of development. It will be a difficult and perhaps tiresome task to achieve such a
consensus on every issue. Nevertheless the recognition of the fact that democracy in
every state is the “worst form of government, except for all the others” also took time
to break a way through, until W.Churchill passed his verdict. The time has come to
realize the inevitability of this axiom also in the international affairs where today
there is a huge deficit of democracy. Of course someone will have to break up the
centuries-old stereotypes and to abandon the claims to eternal uniqueness. But there is
no other way to follow. The consolidated efforts can be built only on the principles of
mutual respect and taking into account of the interests of each other as is the case for
example in the framework of BRICS and SCO, G20 and the UN Security Council.
The theory of the advantages of collective work has been supported by practice: this
includes the progress in the settlement of situation around Iranian nuclear program
and successful conclusion of chemical demilitarization of Syria. Besides, on the issue
of chemical weapons we would like to obtain authentic information on the condition
of chemical arsenals in Libya. We understand that our NATO colleagues after they
bombed out this country in violation of a UNSG Resolution would not like to “stir up”
the mayhem they created. However, the problem of uncontrolled Libyan chemical
arsenals is too serious to turn a blind eye on it. The UN Secretary General has an
obligation to show his responsibility on this issue as well. I

What is important today is to see the global priorities and avoid making them
hostages of a unilateral agenda. There is an urgent need to refrain from double
standards in the approaches to conflict settlement. Everybody largely agrees that it is a
key issue to resolutely counter the terrorists who attempt to put under their control
ncreasingly larger territories in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Sahara-Sahel area. If
this is the case then this task should not be sacrificed to ideological schemes or the
desire to get square with someone. Terrorists no matter what their slogans are should
remain outside the law.

Moreover, it goes without saying that the fight against terrorism should rely on
a solid basis of international law. The unanimous adoption of a number of UNSG
Resolutions including those on the issue of foreign terrorist operatives became an
important stage in this fight. And vice versa the attempts to act against the Charter of
our Organization do not contribute to the success of joint efforts. The struggle against
terrorists in the territory of Syria should be structured in cooperation with the Syrian
government, which clearly stated its readiness to join it.

From the very beginning of the “Arab spring” Russia urged not to leave it to
extremists and to establish a united front to counter the growing terrorist threat. We
warned against a temptation to make allies with almost anybody who proclaimed
himself an enemy of B.Assad: be it Al Qaeda, Jabhat an Nusra and other “fellow
travelers” seeking the change of regime, including ISIL, which today is in the focus of
our attention. As the saying goes, it is better late than never. It is not for the first time
that Russia makes a real contribution to the fight against both ISIL and other terrorist
factions in the region. We have sent large supplies of weapons and military equipment
to the governments of Iraq, Syria and other MENA countries and will continue to
support their efforts to suppress terrorists.

The terrorist threat requires a comprehensive approach if we want to eradicate
its root causes rather than be condemned to react to the symptoms. ISIL is just a part
of the problem. We propose to launch under the auspices of the UN Security Council
an in-depth study on the extremist and terrorist threats in all their aspects across the
MENA area. The integrated approach implies also that the long standing conflicts
should be examined, primarily between Arabs and Israel. The absence of settlement of
the Palestinian issue over several decades remains as it is widely recognized one of
the main factors of instability in the region that helps the extremists to recruit more
and more new Jihadists.

Another literally pressing area of our common work is the joining of our efforts
to implement the decisions of UNGA and UNSC on the fight against Ebola virus. Our
doctors are already working in Africa. There are plans to send additional humanitarian
assistance, equipment, medical instruments, medicines and teams of experts to assist
the UN programs in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

The United Nations established on the ruins of World War II enters the year of
its seventieth anniversary. It is an obligation for all of us to celebrate in appropriate
manner the jubilee of the Great Victory and pay tribute to the memory of all who died
for freedom and the right of each people to determine its own destiny.

The lessons of that terrible war and all the course of events in_ today’s world
demand of us to join our efforts and forget about unilateral interests and national
electoral cycles when it comes to countering the global threats to all humanity. It
should not be allowed that the national egotism prevail over collective responsibility.

Like this:

Looking at some recent media opinion on the Ukraine conflict it’s easy to discern a number of tendencies, one or two of which coincide while others are beginning to diverge in a pattern that to some extent mirrors the divisions and differences currently being played out on the international scene. By examining this pattern it may be possible to obtain some idea of where Western policy on the crisis really lies: after all, the policy of national governments is not usually produced in a vacuum and often comes into being as a fusion of official discussion, “think tanks”, and public media debate.

In the National Interest, Steven Pifer sees the crux of the present standoff in Russia’s denial of involvement in the conflict, a denial for which he seeks the reason. It may, he suggests, have its roots in the anxious desire of the Kremlin authorities to conceal from the Russian public the steadily rising level of Russian casualties:

If Mr. Putin continues or deepens his military involvement in Ukraine, and the casualties mount, what will that do to the support that his Ukraine policy has enjoyed from the Russian public? And could the potential erosion of public support finally lead him to a different course?

Here the outlined position is fairly clear: the West should wait and see if tensions caused by issues of domestic public opinion may bring Russia’s leadership to soften or modify its stance. On the other hand, it might be wondered whether a U-turn of this kind can really be expected from a Kremlin that is prepared to turn a blind eye to the downing of a civilian airliner, or convinced that the humiliation of Ukrainian prisoners of war on the streets of Donetsk does not represent a violation of human rights.

For Anatol Lieven, writing in the New York Times, the matter is simple and straightforward: in view of the fact that the Kremlin will not allow the Donbass separatists to be crushed, the West must take realistic steps:

The choice today is not between a united Ukraine fully in the Western camp, or a Ukraine which has lost part of its territory to Russia. As recent military developments have demonstrated, the first outcome is simply not going to happen. The choice is between a Ukraine with an autonomous Donbass region, along with a real chance of developing the country’s democracy and economy in a Western direction, or a Ukraine which will be mired in a half-frozen conflict that will undermine all hopes of progress. The way out of this disaster is obvious — if only Western governments have the statesmanship and courage to take it.

This is essentially an argument for appeasement, which the author makes little or no attempt to conceal. Meanwhile, in another NYT opinion article, Ben Judah puts the West’s dilemma in a slightly different light: Russia and Ukraine are now at war and Putin, he tells us, has presented the West with “two dire choices”:

Either we arm Ukraine, or we force Kiev to surrender and let Mr. Putin carve whatever territories he wants into a Russian-occupied zone of “frozen conflict.”

While Judah’s sympathies undoubtedly lie more with Ukraine than with Russia, his real concern is apparently to confront Western Europe and America with the nightmare scenario of what he believes will happen if both elements of the choice turn out to be disastrous. Since arming Ukraine will be only a part of the solution – the arming will have to be backed up by the dispatch of American and British special forces, and even by a readiness “to deploy NATO troops if Russian tanks roll toward Crimea” to secure the building of a land bridge to the mainland – there is much doubt as to whether the West will be prepared to take this route. The alternative, then, is to make Ukraine surrender:

But we must not let thousands of Ukrainians die because we dithered. We must be honest with them if we are not willing to fight a new Cold War with Russia over Ukrainians’ independence. But if we force Ukraine to surrender, rather than sacrifice lives in a fight for which we have no stomach, then we must accept that it is a surrender, too, for NATO, for Europe and liberal democracy, and for American global leadership. That is the choice before us.

In response to this it might be argued that to put the matter in such stark and apocalyptic terms is an unproductive oversimplification: after all, the resolution of the present conflict is, by its very nature, bound to involve a number of factors that cannot be predicted with any certainty right now. There is also some confusion in Judah’s use here of the term “Cold War” – given the context of the article, it seems more probable that the author really means “hot war”, but for some reason holds back from this. The real intention of the piece appears to be to cast the West as weak, indecisive and hypocritical.

Another recent article on the Ukraine crisis in which the West appears in an unflattering light is Keith Gessen’s report in the London Review of Books on a visit to Donetsk. This is a lively, autobiographical piece which seeks to portray the human reality of South Eastern Ukraine in closeup, including interviews with members of the anti-Maidan movement and the armed Moscow-backed insurgency. The general drift of the article is to demonstrate that “these are people, too”; that however misguided their views and actions, they deserve a public hearing. Admirable and vivid though the character portrayal and description are (“But among the young professionals I also met a journalist from Lviv. She wasn’t just dressed better than anyone in Donetsk, she was dressed differently, as if on a civilisational level. She looked like she was from France.”), the reader may be somewhat taken aback at Gessen’s summary of what he claims to have been told by “respectable people in Kiev” in response to the armed separatist threat:

Wouldn’t it be a better long-term solution just to kill as many as you could and scare the shit out of the rest of them, for ever? This is what I heard from respectable people in Kiev. Not from the nationalists, but from liberals, from professionals and journalists. All the bad people were in one place – why not kill them all?

At best, this seems like selective reporting – at worst, like a not too sophisticated attempt to blacken the name of all the Ukrainian people who support the Maidan and are trying to save their country.

By contrast, Timothy Snyder takes a passionately supportive view of Ukraine’s democratic independence movement. In Politico he perceives the origins of Putin’s foreign policy in a twentieth century English novel:

In Orwell’s 1984, one of the world powers is called Eurasia. Interestingly enough, Eurasia is the name of Russia’s major foreign policy doctrine. In Orwell’s dystopia, Eurasia is a repressive, warmongering state that “comprises the whole of the northern part of the European and Asiatic land-mass, from Portugal to the Bering Strait.” In Russian foreign policy, Eurasia is a plan for the integration of all the lands from—you guessed it—Portugal to the Bering Strait. Orwell’s Eurasia practices “neo-Bolshevism”; Russia’s leading Eurasian theorist once called himself a “national Bolshevik.” This man, the influential Alexander Dugin, has long advocated that the Ukrainian state be destroyed, and has very recently proposed that Russia exterminate Ukrainians.

Of all the articles reviewed here, Snyder’s is perhaps both the most succinct and the most receptive to what Ukraine’s Maidan movement is trying to achieve: above all, to break away from ways of perceiving the world that amount to “doublethink” and are characterized by the output of the Moscow propaganda machine, which simultaneously presents Ukraine as a “repressive state” and as a “state that does not exist”.

Perhaps the most puzzling recent article on the topic is one by Edward Lucas. Although a large part of it is devoted to a dissection and analysis of what the author calls “Russian revisionism” –new rules of international security that Russia is trying to impose on the rest of the world – its title is “Russia Is Winning”, a sentence that recurs in the body of the piece. The author’s vehement insistence that in spite of its obvious failure to persuade the world community of even a small part of its blustering claims Russia is stronger and tougher than the West, tends to make the rest of the article seems somehow irrelevant: the lengthy and detailed suggestions on how to bolster Western security and the security of the Baltic States, the calls for the rebooting of NATO , the attack on the ‘Snowdenistas’ are like the a suddenly deflated balloon when the reader is told that

Russia is an integrated part of the world economy and of international decision-making on everything from space to sub-sea minerals. It cannot be simply isolated and ignored. But that does not mean that we cannot raise the cost of doing business for the Putin regime.

If isolating Russia is too difficult to achieve, and the West must “do business” with Moscow, albeit at an increased price, it’s hard to see how the rest of the author’s prescriptions can be fulfilled. One has the sense of a deep anger behind the extended paragraphs, and an intimation if not of despair, then of resignation. Since Russia is winning, the article seems to say, then the West will have to make the best of a bad job – the proposed measures are needed, but because of the West’s weakness of will and the “withering of transatlantic ties” many of them will not be implemented, and the West itself will ultimately suffer defeat. It reads like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and its pessimism is not calculated to help and support either Ukraine or the West itself.

Perhaps this is a misreading, and I hope that is so – but I can only give my personal reaction.

In the fog of war, the ADHD of cable news and the smears of Russian propaganda have combined to obscure some important good news in this dismal summer. In the historic fight over the future of democracy in Ukraine, Kyiv is winning and the Kremlin is losing. That is good news for Ukrainians, but also for Europeans, for the rest of the world—and ultimately for Russians, too.

Like this:

“… the downing of Malaysia Airways #17 squandered in one day years of investment in changing Russia’s reputation abroad, including the $50 billion spent on the Sochi Olympics, which were intended to introduce the new, modern Russia to the world. Russia may be feared again, but Russia is not respected.”